What's the Difference Between Body Positivity and Body Liberation?
What if I told you that loving your body is good, but it's not enough — and that there's a way to help everyone in the world feel better about their bodies?
If you've only been familiar with body positivity so far, it's great, but it's just a start. Come with me as we explore body liberation, how it's different from body positivity, and why the world needs both.
What is body positivity?
Body positivity can be defined as the concept that all bodies have worth as they exist today, and that everyone deserves to feel good about our bodies. It's a subset of the fat acceptance movement, which stemmed from the Civil Rights movement, and says that fat bodies are just as worthy as thin bodies, and should be accepted as a natural part of human variation.
If you've heard of fat positivity and think this all sounds familiar, you're right! Fat positivity goes one step further and says that fat bodies are not just worthy, but have a beauty and value of their own.
What is body liberation?
Body liberation is the deliberate work of tearing down the systems — including white supremacy, sexism, and ableism — that created a world where fat people are denied full participation in public life, from apparel to healthcare.
(Though I tend to use the terms “body liberation” and “fat liberation” interchangeably, that’s not a universal view, and some people do see them as different things.)
When a problem is caused by a system, it needs to be fixed by changing the system, and the overarching system that causes bad body image is a big one indeed: racism.
This excerpt from an NPR interview with Sabrina Strings, author of the book Fearing the Black Body, explains:
SOFIA: So OK, Sabrina, are you telling me that when the slave trade started and Europeans saw that African women were essentially curvy, much like European women at the time, at that point they decided that being fat, being thicker, wasn't ideal anymore, and then they built a system of oppression around this idea of needing to be thin to prove racial superiority? Is that it? Am I close?
STRINGS: It's not quite as intentional as that. Effectively, what they determined was that, you know, we wanted to be able to have a mechanism for ensuring that we could recognize who was slave and who was free, right? And it was easy in the beginning of the slave trade; it was simply skin color. But as you might imagine…
SOFIA: Right.
STRINGS: ...After 200 years of living in close proximity, skin color really no longer works as a mechanism, right? Because now we have all of these people who are…
SOFIA: Yeah.
STRINGS: We would consider them today to be biracial. And so, what they did was they decided to articulate new aspects of racial identity.
SOFIA: Right.
STRINGS: And so eating and body size became two of the characteristics that were being used to suggest that these are people who do not deserve freedom.
(And yes, the racism behind weight stigma affects you even if you're a white person. Keep reading to find out why.)
After centuries of racism-driven weight stigma, 75 years of diet culture telling us that thinness is beautiful and sexy, and decades of commercials telling us that thinness is easy to attain, it's no wonder it's so easy to ascribe moral value and worth to thin bodies and a lack of those things to fat bodies.
When we as a society systemically deny certain bodies equal worth, access and value, that’s oppression, and that’s why body liberation is vital to a just and fair world.
Systems are by their nature big, sweeping, and intimidating. It can feel easier to work on our individual body image — and that's also worth doing! But we can't ignore the systems at work if we want to create a world where people don't feel bad about our bodies in the first place. Body liberation is inherently a radical and political movement, and that can be uncomfortable when you first encounter it.
Another concept that can feel pretty intimidating when you first run across it is that of privilege.
Rider University Library has a great definition: "Privilege is the benefits and advantages held by a group in power, or in a majority, that arise because of the oppression and suppression of minority groups."
Why do privilege and intersectionality matter?
I talk about thin privilege a lot in my work, which is one of many privileges that you might possess a certain amount of.
Privileges are a spectrum. For example, I have less thin privilege than someone who is half my size, but I have more thin privilege than someone who is larger than I am because I have more access to the physical infrastructure of the world around us and am likely to be treated better.
Thin privilege means having increased access to things like:
Clothing
Seats in waiting rooms, restaurants and airplanes
Equitable healthcare
And more (check out some statistics here)
Intersectionality is where privileges and the systems of power we talked about above overlap. For example, as a very fat, autistic woman, I lack some privilege in those areas, but I'm also a white person, which means that some of the time I may be treated better because of my whiteness.
It's a complex concept to understand, and it looks different in each situation for each person's unique combination of privileges (and lack thereof).
Here's where we come back to racism.
Weight stigma, or anti-fatness, was designed as a weapon, and is still ultimately aimed at, Black people. But the fear of being fat, and of being treated like fat people are treated in our society, is used to keep everyone in line — Black or not.
Though those of us in white or non-Black bodies shouldn't need incentive to fight anti-Black racism, since it's the right thing to do, fighting racism is one way for us to help make the future less anti-fat as well.
What's the difference between body positivity and liberation?
While body positivity focuses on how we as individuals feel about our bodies, body liberation focuses on the systems that create our feelings about bodies in the first place.
It’s important to understand that the body positivity movement stems directly from the work of fat activists and fat liberationists. Body positivity has reached mainstream attention and acceptance at least in part because of the thin privilege possessed by many of its advocates.
At its core, body positivity seeks to center body liberation efforts on thin and relatively thin white women, which is — to put it mildly — an issue. That's a good reason to focus not just on positivity, but liberation.
What to consider this Weight Stigma Awareness Week
One way to celebrate Weight Stigma Awareness Week this year is to tend your body positivity and grow towards being a body liberationist as well.
Only being "body positive" runs the risk of ignoring the systemic issues that elevate some bodies above others in the first place. The best way to ensure you don’t fall into this trap is to ask these questions of yourself:
Who is being put at the center of attention right now?
Who’s profiting right now?
What about the most marginalized people? Are they being included and elevated here?
How can what I’m doing help people with less privilege than me?
Anti-racism work is an inherent part of fat liberation; we can only achieve body liberation by working to end racism in addition to our efforts on behalf of all fat people.
As Sarah Simon says in Ms. Magazine, “Fat is also a queer issue, and a racialized issue, and an issue of class — because fatness is inseparable from all other intersections of identity.”
